Leaderboard

Following on from the USB Keyboard Controller I hacked together for my Atari 800XL, I've now built this to replace the 800XL (which was making my desk look untidy): I've named it "SFF 320XE" (SFF - "Small Form Factor" - it's 4" square). Specs: Original Atari LSI Couple of ATF22V10C for the glue logic 512 KiB SRAM (320 KiB is decoded) 32/64 KiB E(E)PROM for the OS and BASIC Pico / RP2040 board provides the USB keyboard interface S-Video connector and 3.5mm audio jack Audio/Video and SIO signals are exposed via a couple of headers. I've built an A/V card, copying some elements from @mytek's 576NUC+ audio and video circuits (no vgate because I have a RetroTINK that will crop the video display as desired). I plan to design an SD card adapter for the SIO header next (the RP2040 has a spare core that needs something to do!). Some more pics: Lashed up to a FujiNet: Credits - this forum is awesome - I've learnt a lot lurking here for the last few years. In particular, the Atari 800XL and @mytek's 576NUC+ schematics, and, @shoestring's memory tester have been invaluable getting this thing designed and debugged - thanks. The hardware design files, schematics, gerbers and supporting source code are here (if you're so inclined): https://github.com/dpicken/atari-hw

It's pretty trivial to modify a local copy of a website you are viewing. ..Al

On my site https://a8.jindrou.sh is now available the Z-Machine ATR generator https://a8.jindrou.sh/inform.html It lets you upload any Z3/Z4/Z5/Z7/Z8 story, also packaged in Zblorb/blorb formats (No Z6 support though). After uploading server presents you with list of potential images and lets you select and download them in single zip file. Z3 interpreter is modified original Inform's interpreter from Plundered Hearts, Z4+ is much more heavily modified as I presented in this thread: Currently there is a selection of several disk formats (even trying to make split SD disks), and 4 different videomodes. Only Z3 runs on stock 48KB Atari, rest needs at least 130XE compatible extended memory. All of this is still work in progress so please don't hesitate to report any errors.

Dropzone +6HDG By TheEnemy of TREX 1. Title page converted from Ste86 c64 pic and then touched up on atari 2. Documents added 3. 6 trainers added 4. High saver to disk added (wont save if any trainer on) 5. Bugs have been fixed, ntsc issues have been fixed which includes: *The dropzone logo wouldnt drop and had issues *Garbage was shown on screen after game over Other fixes for both include: *Overscan on the left is now fixed which probably only effects when shown on new tvs. *The colour of the dropzone player is now lighter in cloak mode *Finally I fixed the name entry as it was far too sensitive. Please make sure on new devices such as SIO2SD etc when saving that you give enough time to make sure it has saved before turning the Atari off as on some models we noticed there was a little bit of a delay before this process was complete. Any problems/bugs then let me know and i will look into them. Hope you enjoy it. Dropzone+6HDG[TREX].ATR

Hi guys. I appreciate the concerns that have you expressed, but really the things are fine, there were a little flood in an area of my house, mainly affecting my storage and game room. That affected some items of my collection, but nothing too much hard to recover(a couple of 65xe, a msx, etc) and some hardware items that I used to maintain the backups of the source code of a lot of my games, which I only discover when I wanted to recover said backups after a SO re-installation. It's really just the loss of the source code that stings the most, and donations or other type of help aren't required nor necessary but I greatly appreciate the gesture. I simply cancelled these projects because I currently don't have the time, or energy to remake those games from scratch and I don't like to have those unfinished roms posted when I know that I will never will be able to finish those projects. I will maintain posted all my finished projects and those where I still have the source code, but for now I will take an hiatus from development for atari systems and focus for now in other systems. So again, thanks for your concerns, but I am fine, just a little demoralized for now.

@Spanno that looks very nice, and is even more compact than the 576NUC+ that I designed. Great work 👍 At 4"square that matches the footprint of a 'real' NUC computer.

One of the new options we've added is "boomstick". Which makes the shotgun basically one shot anything to oblivion 😄

New shell, showing the cutout for the USB cable near the edge connector: End view - it should be pretty much impossible to connect USB when this is inserted in your Atari! 🙂 New PCB (bottom side):

https://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-4.20-test27.zip https://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-4.20-test27-src.7z AltirraOS 3.40: Fix for FASC overwriting FR0. Added 835 HLE emulation. 1030 HLE emulation now supports analog loopback, more accurate behavior of dialing and the P command, and when SIO commands can be issued. 1030 full emulation timing improved by removing a one byte transmission delay. Additions/built-in T: now tracks on/off hook state, handles carrier detect timeout, waits for ACK after commands, and has better touch dial timing. OK, I just ask because I try to note which program got broken for regression testing purposes. I managed to rework the code to make it work -- math pack's like a can of sardines because there are no proper vectors, the official entry points are everywhere in the ROM.

This is fun and all, but I would appreciate if we could get back on track. Some of these subjects are definitely better explored in their own threads. Thank you, ..Al

This is needed here...

Ill post where my booth at PRGE when I know myself. I also will have physical copies of Game Panic III for the 2600, my other 2600 homebrews, and hopefully Blockem Sockem for the SNES on hand as well. Huge thanks to Albert for making this happen to be a physical release.

https://www.retrogamingexpo.com/ I'll be there with my usual TI-99/4A booth showing the nintendo gamers what a 16 bit computer can do

Lots of water under the bridge and my Eclaire XL is still a joy. Just had a new case printed, since my first one was pretty warped. Colour choice perhaps to celebrate the AtariAge acquisition? (nope, the guy printing the case made a mistake and so this turned up in gold instead of beige) I think it works though?

I was in line at the grocery store the other day waiting for some old hen to write a check for $5 when it occurred to me there is a "good" and "bad" side to nostalgia/retro...

For next game: Old multi carts: Switch off, switch on, play New multi carts: Switch off, plug out, change dip switches, plug in, switch on, wait, play IMO that's a "pre-nostalgic" experience.

Don´t get confused by the look, I´m using Altirra on a Mac (via wine), but the steps should be identical: In Altirra go to "File - Disk Drives": Click on it and a new window opens with D1: to D8:, where you click on the "play" (triangle) button on any of the drives and then click on "New disk..." : Another window appears, where you can set the format of the disk and the dos structure (DOS will NOT be written onto it) : After confirming, you´re back in the Disk Drives window, where you have to click on the play button (triangle) again to save your disk: Now just enter a file name and choose where to save it. Now you have an ATR file which you can use with any Emulator or put on any device that can deal with ATRs and do whatever you want to do with it.

I just thought to mention that the ZX Spectrum has a Pac Man arcade that uses the original Pac Man roms and runs on a 128k Speccy. https://simonowen.com/spectrum/pacemuzx/

Looking for a position as "Head of Testing & Tasting Uncorked Beverages" (H.O.T.T.U.B) Anything?

Trying to get back on topic here, I have a two-part question for @Albert and @TrogdarRobusto : So, with AtariAge and Atari working together, are there any plans for incentivizing homebrew authors (or teams of programmers, artists, and/or designers) to develop new titles for the 2600+? While nostalgia is a good hook, I feel that having a block of, say, nine(?) new titles could help invigorate interest. On a related note, I understand some of the original Activision authors (Dan Kitchen and I thought one other?) from back in the day wrote some new 2600 titles recently. Has Atari reached out to any of these original developers since some still seem to have an active interest in the console?

Enjoy the Last Game of Season 14! Important Dates: Sept 24: Last Day to Post Scores for the Lady Bug Sept 25: I will Update the Final Standings Sept 25: I will be in contact with Tournament Players and the People who qualify for picking the Tournament Games. Sept 26: The Games will Begin! GOOD LUCK TO ALL!

I have been helping with a 7800basic project that requires vertical scrolling and the idea of adding extra objects to the bottom row to use up all the Maria cycles seems to work very well. In case it is of any use, attached is the source for a demo program making use of the technique. scroll.zip

Attempt #2 - Instructions for installing this thing, mainly for @karri. At some point this will probably end up being a PDF, but it's easier to just post it here for now. This is @Frax_Excelsior's machine done barring a load of testing. AJM3 Mod for PAL 7800 DISCLAIMER Let’s just get this out of the way; the PAL 7800 isn’t very nice to work on. It has tiny solder pads that’ll lift if you as much as look at one funny. The solder they often used wasn’t very good and they weren’t all very nicely put together. As such you will likely rip up some pads in the process of doing this mod. If you are uncomfortable with de-soldering and potentially repairing de-soldering gone wrong, DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS MOD. This mod isn’t for people who are not confident around electronics and repairing them. ABOUT THE MOD The AJM3 is, as the name might suggest, the third iteration of the Anti-Jack Mod. A mod specifically for the Atari 7800 to replace the RF output with something better. Like the mods before it, it isn’t perfect. We’re fighting a losing battle against some of the poor decisions made when the PAL 7800 came into being and as such, do not expect this thing to magically fix everything. It also is realistically an S-Video only mod right now. No idea why the composite out is behaving like it is and to be honest as this mod was never meant to go on general release, we’ve not really looked into fixing it as we use S and it looks way better regardless. Maybe in the future there might be a 3.1 version that does, for now just use S-Video. INSTALLATION Unbolt your 7800, extract it’s guts then remove the shield. This machine has also had a service so has got new caps, buttons, regulator and a 2.1mm DC jack. You should be left with something that looks like this: There are two trimmers on the main PCB that set the MARIA (7800) chroma (R42) and the TIA (2600) chroma (R43). On a PAL machine they’re usually just hot-snotted. You’re going to have to adjust these so spray some IPA on the snot and it should come off easily with a poke The audio mod is simple. Lift the left hand pins of R32 and R33, twist them together, then run them through a 10u electrolytic capacitor to an audio out jack. I’ve used a non-polarised cap here because that’s what I had. Using a regular one the positive side of the cap connects to the resistors. How you do your sockets is entirely up to you so I’m not going to go into that here. Here’s where you pull a load of components. Not everything we’ve pulled here needs to come out (like the polystyrene caps for example), but it’s all stuff that either needs to come out for the mod, has a slim chance of causing some interference or is simply annoying and in the way. Pull: R25 R29 C56 C57 C66 R61 R62 R66 Q8 L6 C53 R35 and R74 Install luma bodge wire from left hand pad of R62 to top right pad of T1. Running any of chroma and luma lines near each other or making them excessively long will cause a degraded picture. We run this along the back across the shield to keep it out of the way, and it allows us to pick up that particular luma line from the bottom pad of R73 now. Replace R66 with a 12K resistor. This pulls the sync signal down to a more sensible level. Again ignore how I’ve wired the jacks, do these however you please. Also there’s a cut missing from the pic that I did later with regard to that (the red mark). Install off board MARIA colourburst clock. I’ll make a nice board for this later. As it is it’s the end hacked off a previous failed iteration of this mod. We’re pulling power and ground from the legs of C50, the clock goes to the top pad of R74. Here is the mod board itself with all it’s wires cut to length. I highly recommend fitting it where we have with some sticky back pads. It’ll give the shortest cable runs possible and it’s dead space there anyhow. As it was so wee, I used acronyms for the pads which are as follows: LMO - Luma Out - Goes to your S-Video Jack CVO - Composite Video Out - Unused in this mod as it doesn’t work right. At some point we’ll figure out why… CRO - Chroma Out - Goes to your S-Video Jack GND - Ground - The one at the top. Put there for convenience if you need one for your jacks. We’re getting it from the board in this install so it’s unused. LMI - Luma In - Goes to bottom pad of R73 (through the bodge wire that ultimately ends up on the left pad of R62) TCI - TIA Chroma In - Goes to the right pad of R35 MLO - MARIA Luma Out - Goes to left pad of R61 MLI - MARIA Luma In - Goes to bottom pad of R29 GND - Ground - Goes to left pad of R68 or bottom pad of modulator 5V - Power - Goes to second from bottom pad of modulator MCI - MARIA Chroma In - Goes to the left pad of R25 All done, it should look something like this: SET UP You will have to set the trimmers to get the colour right, the top one is for the MARIA (7800) chroma (R42) and the bottom is for the TIA (2600) chroma (R43). Now this will be a bit of a thing if you haven’t done it before. On the upside the colours don’t drift like they do on an NTSC machine so you don’t have to worry about that. But on the downside you can’t use the utility that exists to set up the 7800 side as that’s geared toward NTSC. Also if you’re trying to do this on a panel, go slow as they can take a while to lock onto changes in the signal. Don’t try and do this through a Koryuu if you can help it as that thing auto compensates for the incoming image. So this is how we do it, we’re so used to how certain things look we can set up a PAL machines colours with BallBlazer and Combat. Please bear in mind that photographing CRT’s is hard and that our cameras don’t do colours well, so I’ll try and describe it and give examples: Left CRT / Right LCD For BallBlazer start a game with two human players, get up to the opponents spinner and hit pause. The top spinner should be a reddy brown (mostly red) and the background blue. These pics are fairly accurate. If you go to the side of the pitch, out of bounds is a burgundy colour. On boot, the logo should be on a dull brown background and you should see even gradients in the lettering. Left CRT / Right LCD For Combat change the game to number two and hit start. The background is a deep green, the left player a pastel blue and the right a reasonably strong pink. The play field surround should be a sandy yellow (not too intense). In this pic the pink is washed out and the surround isn’t quite yellow enough. That’s the camera being a complete arse and refusing to deal with reds properly. That’ll get them close anyhow, tweak to taste and to the TV you’re using also. Commando 7800 is another good test as it’s got a lot of dark greens on the boot screen. The PAL 7800 hates those and it’s where you’ll most see the colour rolling that the PAL MARIA does (nothing we can do about it). But the opening screen should be dark green and the flesh tones browny. The game itself, the background is green and brown. If it looks wrong, it probably is. Slight tweakage might be required. FINAL NOTES The quality of your S-Video cable matters. Try to get one with shielded co-axial wiring inside. Compatibility of old mods with modern sets is completely random. We seem to have this playing well with most things. But we still occasionally find a set that it won’t play nice with. That’s just the way of the world now it seems.

Very nice, it must be monitor month, as I also picked up what I would say is quite a rarity. It replaces my 12 inch 3:4 LCD TV A 20 Inch 3:4 LCD TV, normally you only see wide screen, or small ( <15 Inch ) 3:4 LCD TVs SHARP LC-20S5E-WH 20 Inch Screen VGA Panel 640 X 480 S-VIDEO and Composite input on the Side PC INPUT 1x RGB SCART 1x Composite/Svid Scart Supports NTSC / PAL / SECAM Analogue RF Tuner This pic shows it with an 800XL for size comparison. For its age its in really good condition and it was a bargain at £20 I prefer the Flat Screens for space reasons

This protection scheme for the A8Pico Cart in my project has been tested and is working. Although I did have to add pull-down resistor R12 to insure that the CD74HCT4053 control inputs always had a well defined logic state, and were not allowed to float in the absence of USB 5V power. So to review what this is doing. If the A8Pico Cart were to be left plugged into the Atari when not powered and then connected to the PC under these conditions, the RD4 and RD5 signals will be immediately disconnected from the pico, and thus prevented from seeing power under this switched OFF state. So this allows for safely flashing new firmware or adding new files to the Flash RAM without having to remove the cart from the Atari. Also diode D1 prevents back feeding from the USB supplied 5V into the Atari's 5V power bus, but still allows the Atari to power the cart if the USB 5V is not present. And the built-in diode of the pico board prevents the Atari from trying to do the reverse and back feed into the PC via the USB connection. So in other words protection has been provided for any scenario. EDIT: This protection scheme was needed for my project since the A8Pico Cart aspect is built-in and non-removable.

maybe they are empty slots full of FF's. thanks for testing, been super curious since I saw it had 10 games. lol eta: maybe if they haven't produced them yet, they should just duplicate some of the games to fill all 16 slots so you can't ever get a "Bad" combination that makes someone think their cart doesn't work

"Here at Amico Limited Inc LLC WTF, we're hard at work soldering components together. And here is one of our team workers now...."

Woman spotted attempting to set up multiplayer game on Amico Home

Kirk is a quirky one indeed. His posts are basically a "look what I saw on YouTube today!" Whether it's GameHut, RGME, or good ol' SNESDrunk, he's not discovering these things by playing games... here's merely looking at them. It helps his explain his "if I make some graphics mock-ups, it'll inspire programmers to do the easy part!" approach. Actually, I nearly forgot! A couple weeks ago I watched this fun video as I drifted off to sleep: DF Retro Play: 3D on SNES - 3D Gaming Without SuperFX - 8 Games Tested! Take a look at the games they show off here. When they got to Super Off-Road: The Baja, it suddenly hit me: wait, didn't Kirk JUST make a thread with his usual longplay video spam of some of these games? Yup... so he's not even making these "discoveries" via exploring the extensive SNES game library (with his glorified emulator they call a hacked SNES Mini - not real hardware). He's just binging YouTube videos that other people have made, then posting news of his latest discovery on his blog + the few forums that haven't booted him yet.

It prints the message, "Loading Game Failed" on the screen. I tried a few different invalid combinations on both carts. ..Al

Garfield on laziness

Hey thanks for the job lead. I think I will try out for this one. I'm not sure this has been discussed, but does this mean that AA may be a special retailer for Atari? Like AA might sell a special AA 2600+ that has an AA homebrew as an additional feature? Obviously might not be happening with the 2600+ but needed to suggest an example.

Just retrobright it.

Hi all, I got my new PCBs from China today, and the simple modification to the design works well. I've also tweaked the shell with the USB cutout in the new position. I'll post some pics later on. New version of the PCB (& gerbers) and STL files will be posted to github over the weekend probably. Also, I got 15 PCBs from Elecrow (for less than £5!) and I've got a few purple pico clones left over from my experiments, so if anybody in the UK wants a full cart with the new safer design (and 3d printed shell) then please PM me, since I might as well use up the spare bits and some of the purple PLA I purchased for the project! Robin

I've bought a hell of a lot of stuff of A8 late, but here is my bargain RGB Philips CM8801 Vintage CRT Colour Monitor (scart only), which I can use with my VBXE 800XL (which has and RGB Din13 to Scart Cool Novelties cable), Atari ST and my Atari Jaguar. Can't wait to play Swiety's A8Doom on this monitor!!! (Incidentally apart from the Prince of Persia image, (which is a Piccalo created image by Rensoup), all are Rasta converter images, (so not VBXE exclusive). The last three images are my own Rasta conversions from the last couple of years)

Thanks! Your NUC inspired me (I have two 😀).

Here's a video that reveals some strategies. Here's what I do: When the music starts a round, glance down at the order tickets. Mentally, I give numerical values to the ingredients (1 for tomato, 2 for onion, 3 for lettuce, 4 for cheese) Then, I just combine the numbers for ingredients each order ticket. In your pic above, ticket #1 (top row) would be "12 ("1" for tomato and "2" for onion), ticket #2 would be "13" (tomato, lettuce), and ticket #3 would be "34" (lettuce, cheese). About 90% of the time where you only need the bun top to complete an order ticket, it will be the next item shot out. If not, hold the button down while bumping into the shot out ingredient to send it back to the kitchen. You might even have to hold down the button while bumping 3 or 4 unneeded ingredients consecutively, then simply release the button when the ingredient you want comes out so you can catch it.

It's been so long since I found something gaming related at the thrift store so I figured I'd post. Found this NES Power Set box with only the power pad, zapper, styrofoam inserts, and power pad box. St. Vinnie's wanted $40 for it so I almost passed. But I've wanted a boxed NES for awhile now, so my loose one will now live in this box. I probably overpaid but I couldn't resist.

While I I know, I don't like that logo! But it was an official logo for a time. I'm glad the company abandoned that one... I do think they are cool, only because I'm old now and dip switches were used for many devices back in the day (you were certainly familiar with them if you owned any arcade games!) Heck, we have dip switches today in the AtariVox+. Also, since you are kindly reading my message, here's a nice photo of the dip switches on the back of one of these new cartridges: ..Al

A little better score. The game is cute, but VERY frustrating... When you accidently pick up something you don't need it seems you CANNOT let it go. What do you do? 🥺 EDIT: It would have been fantastic if the game had a garbage can to the side that you could dump unwanted items into...... 5,680

@TrogdarRobusto, the developer Vladimir Zuñiga, aka @vhzc , has put out a wonderful line of quality 2600 games - ten unique/original titles, and even a couple of 7800 entries, on display here: https://vhzc.games/index.php It would be an awesome public relation move and gesture for Atari to partner up with said international (Santiago, Chile) developer, and perhaps strike some sort of deal or arrangement, especially one who has just been hit with a recent loss. Certainly not expecting any promises, but definitely thought it is worth the time and attention. This can be a real win-win situation all around. 10 quality games all ready to go for the 2600 and even 2 completed and ready to go for the 7800. They would make a very nice official addition to the 2600+. Of course, this is if Vlad is interested in such an arrangement as well.

Nice! Makes sense for the Spectrum, with it's Z80. The color version looks a bit, rough, as expected. Black & white is good.

@schnuth The empty box itself in rougher shape is worth $20+ That's just cardboard, no foam inserts, nothing. A complete system 150-250. Highest one i found was $400 complete. You're ahead of the game with the two boxes and inserts, the pad itself and the gun. Any random NES with the hookups which could be done fairly cheap with a little persistence gets you a pretty good savings so that's a solid rescue. And given you have the console and hookups, short of anything from the contents missing (specific paperwork really, or that 3in1 cart if you don't have it) and you're golden.

I scanned that one quite a few years ago https://atarimuseum.nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/software_catalogue_uk.pdf Quite interesting is that are some titles listed in there that were never released.

AH YES i remember that ad.. i used to make fun of my brother saying he was like that.. eventually we got a game gear in like 1996.. he hated it because it plowed through batteries like whoa..

Well it came back up, but I'm going to rebuild it all with a more up-to-date OS. So it'll vanish again for a bit probably this weekend...

https://atari.com/pages/careers Is this position open? (Asking for a pooch)

Is it time yet??? Too soon???

now I see that Jag uses a lower screen resolution, something like 160px vs 320px on 32x