x=usr(1536)

Agreed; definitely check what's inside. And apologies if any of the below is at all vague or inaccurate, but it's been a long time since I had a modified 800. My 800 ran a similar set of modifications back in the day, but with a much lower total amount of RAM (128K) in a 2x32K plus 1x64K configuration. At least one of the memory cards appeared to be a standard 16K Atari RAM card, but if you pulled it out you lost 32K. The part number on the OS card at IC location A401 corresponds to the Rev. B NTSC OS, so that IC at least is probably stock. The switch on card #2 may be there to select between regular 16K operation and however much memory was installed on it beyond that. I seem to recall that there were some modifications that supported this, but don't remember specifics. Does anyone have the pinouts for the RAM and OS cards available? I've searched but can't find them, and they'd definitely help with trying to figure out what's going on here. What I'm seeing is ringing bells but my mind's not quite dredging up the info.

Just replying to confirm that the above statement is correct. My knowledge of Sean Robinson's involvement with the Coleco Chameleon is limited to what has been made publicly-available either here or elsewhere; I do not have any deeper insights or information beyond that. I will also confirm that the above statement matches my intent in releasing the information that I had regarding Sean Robinson.

Re: private information: all of the documents in the .ZIP file are taken from publicly-accessible sources. This means either the County of Riverside, California courts or Usenet searches of the rec.games.video.arcade.collecting newsgroup performed via Google Groups. Any information contained within those documents can be found by anyone able to use those resources appropriately.

There is some background that I'd like to provide regarding the release of this information. I had followed the Coleco Chameleon debacle both here and in other outlets as it was unfolding. This meant that I was aware of Sean Robinson's involvement with that project more or less as soon as everyone else was, and really wanted to get the warning out about him at that time. Unfortunately, what I didn't have at that point was any proof to back up the claims that would need to have been made regarding his criminal past. That changed a few months ago when I ran across a laptop that I hadn't used in about a decade: it wouldn't boot, but I was able to yank the hard disk and pull data from it. The archive of court documents related to Sean Robinson was one of the items that was recovered. Initially, I dithered over what to do with the information: it wasn't clear to me that there was any benefit to releasing it now that the Chameleon fiasco was over. However, after much thought, I eventually came to the conclusion that his actions in relation to the Chameleon were not dissimilar to those involving arcade collectors for which he had been sent to jail nearly 15 years prior. This makes him a recidivist, and, as such, there is no reason to believe that he will ever stop trying to pull one over on the unwary. This led to the conclusion that the best course of action would be to warn as many people as possible about him, and to provide concrete evidence as to why he should not be given one iota of trust. If I can, I'd like to make one request - can we please have the posts detailing his past and containing the court documents added to the index in the first post of this thread? I would like this information to be as easily-accessible as possible.

Forgot to attach the court records. Allow me to fix that. Sean Robinson.zip

It's been a while since any new info was added to this thread, so this seems like a good time to do exactly that. Welcome to Longpostville; this is not going to be short. My focus for this post is going to be Sean Robinson. He's already been mentioned a few times in this exact thread, and those mentions can be found by searching within the thread for the term 'Robinson'. The intent of this post is twofold: firstly, to remove any ambiguity as to whether or not Sean Robinson has a criminal background; secondly, by doing so, to inform anyone who may be considering engaging with him in a business or commercial capacity as to exactly why he is a fraud, swindler, and completely untrustworthy. With that out of the way, let's start with an illustration of our person of interest. Sean Robinson looked like this a decade or so ago; we'll assume that his conscience has allowed him to age well enough that he's recognizable today from the following picture. I first ran across him somewhere around the late-1999 / early-2000 timeframe, when he was using the handle 'Seanrox' on IRC and forums. He had started hanging out at a couple of technology-related meetings in the L.A. area that I had been going to on a regular basis, and after talking over the course of a few weeks it became apparent that we were both interested in classic computer systems and arcade games. Over time, other people with similar interests also got to know him. It all sounds like the start of a beautiful bromance, and, for a while, it was. Sean always seemed to have stuff - particularly related to classic arcade video games - that we were looking for. And if he didn't have it right then, he could come up with it in some surprisingly short timeframes, like usually within a couple or three weeks. The guy was a frickin' miracle worker in that regard, for the most part. And he only charged buddy prices for these items, which we thought was really decent of him. For about a year or so, everything was cool; he'd even go to parties that people in these same groups held at their homes. Then things started - gradually at first - going South. Some of us (myself included) started not receiving items that we'd paid him for. No big deal at first, they were just delays... But then he'd drop off of the face of the planet for weeks at a time, only to show back up again out of nowhere. Every time he showed back up, there was a new reason for him going incommunicado: a sick or dying grandparent, major car problems, trouble with his marriage, issues at work. OK, shit happens. Just sort it out when you can; we'll hang on for you, dude. Keep the cash, we know you're good for it. Yeah, this is the familiar pattern starting to emerge. But you want to give your friend a chance to get through it, so you give him the benefit of the doubt. At this juncture, I'd like to make one thing very clear just in case it isn't: Sean Robinson was offering these excuses in person. Remember: we're talking late-2000 / early-2001 here by this time. Sure, there was also email and IRC involved, but the world of social media as we know it now simply didn't exist then. People actually met and talked and interacted directly. A radical and unsettling concept for many readers, I'm sure, but that's just how it was back in the day. Regardless, he was, quite literally, live and direct, lying to both my and our faces. That bastard has looked straight into my eyes and told me complete untruths about when I could expect to receive various parts, etc. that I had paid him for which never materialized. And I'm far from the only person he did this to. He was also pulling this stunt with people on Usenet, but it would be a while before we found that one out. Moving on: a number of us got taken as a result of giving him the benefit of that doubt. As we were to later learn, Sean Robinson was running a much larger ponzi scheme in that he was using money received from one arcade collector to cover debts to another, and that ponzi scheme was happening with a much wider circle of people who we didn't know. But, as it typically goes with most ponzi schemes, they can never bring in enough cashflow to both cover the outstanding debts and provide working capital. He was out of financial runway, and we were going to learn how far the extent of his swindle actually went. 2001 has passed and we're into 2002 (IIRC). Sean has been getting increasingly flaky, and showing his face less and less. We're still tolerating his presence (when he's actually turning up), but most of us have decided that he's worthless by the middle of the year. As is typical of people running these kinds of scams, he's been claiming that he'll take care of everything, it'll all be OK, just give him some time, etc. We're tired of hearing it, but, having already written off our losses, decide to run with it because we frankly have no alternative. We're also starting to poke around in various claims he's made to see how much truth there is to them, and are starting to find that there is little to none. One of the claims he made was that he was in a band. That's fine; on face value, anyone can be in a band. But, around the time that he started acting flakier and flakier, he also started telling us how his band was going to go on tour in Japan for a year. At various times, he had also told different people that he was in a band with Kip Winger. Or someone from Kix. Or... <Insert Hair Band Name Here>. Either way, he and them were gonna be partying down in Japan for the next twelve months, so he wouldn't be able to get in contact with anyone in L.A. in that time. You know, with the rocking hard and sake and geishas and all that. Ignoring the fact that a year-long tour of Japan would mean playing the same venues three or four times over, we smelled a giant pile of bullshit. Calls started being made - and received. One of the calls that was received was from a detective investigating many complaints of grand theft against Sean Robinson. I got one, as did a few other people I know. The questions were pretty much the same across the board: how do you know him, how long have you known him, have you had any financial dealings with him, and how did those work out? This was when we knew he was totally, utterly, and completely full of shit. He was facing charges in California that were going to send him to prison for at least a year, and the band tour of Japan was a cover story for the time he was about to spend in the clink. From speaking with the detective, we ascertained that his dealings were much larger than the flakiness we'd suspected of him. We'd also put some effort into researching his background and contacting other people he'd swindled, most of whom were only too happy to tell us about their interactions with him. We eventually worked out that the amount of Sean Robinson's fraud was probably somewhere around the mid-five figures. He'd screwed over a lot of people - and many of them for much more than we had been. We also learned that he apparently lied to his wife for two years straight regarding his employment (he had no steady job at the time, but had told her that he was going into work every day), and that he'd also sold a vehicle belonging to a family member through a false claim of ownership. Unfortunately (and particularly given his demonstrable lack of honesty and trustworthiness) we were never able to fully-prove these claims, but, given his track record, find it difficult to disbelieve them. In any event, he ended up serving about a year in prison on multiple counts of felony Grand Theft courtesy of the Riverside, California courts. Check the attachments to this thread; screenshots taken back in 2003 (amongst other items) are in there that serve as records of this. Something that I feel should be made clear at this time: despite the fact that Sean screwed me out of a few hundred dollars, my complaint was not one of the ones that resulted in charges against him. While the amount that I had lost was above the limit in California for Grand Theft at the time, other people had been swindled out of considerably more than I had. As a result, charges were brought on the basis of their complaints rather than mine as their losses were more likely to result in a successful prosecution. I never ended up being compensated for my losses. Now, at this point, you'd think that Sean Robinson would do the smart thing by serving his time in prison and fading the hell out. Sadly, you'd be wrong. As of 2010 (a year or two after his probation period was over), he was heavily involved with the Commodore Computer Club USA, as well as other technology-related groups in the Pacific Northwest. I'm guessing that they're unaware of his felonious past. This brings us up to the Coleco Chameleon. Sean Robinson's middle name is Lee, which is the connection between him and the 'Mysterious Mr. Lee' mentioned in relation to the Coleco Chameleon. For confirmation of this, please check the attached court records. It's no surprise that the Chameleon was a failure. While I cannot pin that on Sean Robinson directly, the fact that he was involved speaks volumes for the integrity of that project. For now, I need to stop. This has run remarkably long, and I'm tired of having to write and edit it. Please read through the attached documents, and if there are any questions that I can reasonably answer I will do so to the best of my ability. But under no circumstances should Sean Lee Robinson be considered to be someone with a shred of honesty, integrity, decency, or ethics. He is a liar, thief, and scammer, and should be approached and treated as such. As a footnote, it wouldn't surprise me to find that if he were to turn up in certain places today he may find himself having his ass kicked eight ways from Sunday in the parking lot. There are a lot of really pissed-off people with long memories that he's left in his wake, and I wouldn't fault them for seeking compensation out of his hide if they saw him again.

Did they kiss? That would be hawt.

That's the thing... I also had an Odyssey2 at the time. It was mainly used for games, but at least it had the assembly language cartridge as a pack-in. Granted, I had no clue what I was doing with it as assembly was beyond me at the time, but I actually liked that machine (and still do). The Aquarius seemed like a backwards step even in comparison to the O2. Late 1983 or early 1984, more likely early 1984. I could ask my folks if they remember anything about it, but it's doubtful they would (other than that it failed to keep me away from the Apple; that one has come up in conversation in the past).

"Have we delayed our ship date today?"

This, right here, explains a very large part of why this is (currently) a 113-page thread. We're coming up on half-a-year of hype with nothing to show for it. Until there's an ASIN or SKU assigned to it, it's vapourware. Pretty vapourware, but vapourware nonetheless.

"Do you have any idea what it feels like to take a woman for twenty bucks?" "No, I'm afraid that's a bit out of my league."

Totally unrelated to anything Ataribox-related: I can claim a Six Degrees of Bacon connection to that film. Admittedly, it's tenuous, but I'm gonna roll with it One of the Atari consoles in my collection is a Super Pong. It's still in the box, complete with styrofoam, manual, warranty card, etc.... And it also has the original sales receipt from when it was purchased new. The receipt shows that it was sold through The Game Keeper store at the Glendale Galleria in Glendale, California. This was the location that was used for Morris' game store in the Cloak & Dagger film. Hey, I said it was tenuous

I would hazard a guess that Doctor Pong was a trademark registered separately from Pong (or the other Pong variants), so having both listed may make sense even though the gameplay was identical.

To AtariBoxCorp, Inc.'s credit, they don't seem to have anyone on their development staff who has served time for multiple counts of felony Grand Theft committed against arcade game collectors. By way of comparison to the Chameleon fiasco, that puts them light-years ahead! Well, as far as we can tell, anyway...

Zenposting.

Those two models may not be the best analogy for the point that you're making: both the PT Cruiser and New Beetle were sales successes (mainly in the North American market) with long model lifetimes (PT Cruiser, 2001-2010; New Beetle, 1998-2011 and 2012-present as the Beetle) and solid returns on investment for their respective manufacturers. Additionally, development costs for the pair were significantly lower than for a completely new model as both borrowed heavily from existing platforms - the Chrysler Neon in the case of the PT Cruiser, and the VW Golf in the case of the New Beetle. As this relates to AtariBox, they could have used this approach to good effect by lowering manufacturing costs through buying in a pre-designed platform. And maybe they have: we don't really know what the tie-up with AMD is going to produce in that regard. But software is what sells systems, and a good software library could overcome reviews in which an off-the-shelf hardware design is mentioned. In a sense, it already has. There's no clear direction from leadership, a ton of hype with little to no substance behind it, and two other Atari products on the market (one of which has actually made it into consumers' hands) that have next to no relation to the AtariBox under development. It's a mess, and it doesn't bode well for AtariBoxCorp, Inc's ability to actually deliver on their promises; they're fitting many of the failed Kickstarter stereotypes to a T. Point taken re: the pack-in controller. And, in defence of the controller that was shown, it really does have lovely aesthetics. But it doesn't seem to have good design, at least not from the standpoints of either customer expectations or human interface considerations. That said, I don't think that having an 'open system' (a term that's still going undefined no matter how many times or for how long we keep mentioning it) is dependent on the controller in use. If anything, the 'open system' designation should at least imply a BYOC approach - if you don't like the (or don't have a) pack-in controller, provide your own. Linux has excellent support for virtually every type and variety of gaming controller out there, so this should be a no-brainer for them. However, if that is the case, it needs to be communicated. And AtariBoxCorp, Inc. has been extremely poor at actually communicating. They certainly know how to hire PR flacks to generate a ton of cut-and-paste Twitter traffic, though. See above re: Twitter shitposting. The fact that they engaged in this (as well as their poor communications track record) is one reason why I am reluctant to accept the idea that they might actually receive, process, and understand valid criticism. I do too. I also hope that they understand the difference between 'listening to' and 'acting on'.

Agreed that the software is the key; reproductions (as opposed to Flashback-style reinterpretations) of the 8-bit, ST, or console lines would be both ungodly involved to undertake and not likely to result in appreciable sales in relation to the development effort involved. Then again, as long as none of those devices would be required to accept a USB 3 cable, they might just pull it off Having said that, given that some of the dedicated consoles were TTL devices, there is no software to work with, so the IP would be entirely hardware-related. Granted, that doesn't prohibit writing a simulation of it in software and using the original name to identify the version done in software - but if the IP rights of ownership are limited to software and identifying marks for that software, ownership of the rights to those consoles may be unclear.

Understood, and I caught that as well. There really doesn't seem to be a 100% discernible pattern, but the asterisks are weighted towards the arcade games. I did go through the entire slide deck contained in that PDF, and amongst the things that stood out to me was that vector games were almost inevitably shown running on arcade hardware, not as home ports, with Tempest being a notable exception. If this document can serve as any kind of roadmap for future Ataribox game releases (and I'm not saying that it does, but given ownership of the games' IP, it's not a stretch to say that it's likely not an unrealistic association to make), that brings up something of an interesting point: MAME would almost certainly have to be used for those games as (IIRC) it's the only currently-maintained arcade emulator capable of rendering a vector display on raster hardware. And if you're going that route for the vector games, might as well build it with MESS support and also knock out the 8-bit and ST line at the same time. So, without trying to leap to conclusions but rather inferring what may be possible from the evidence presented, the Ataribox is likely to be a wrapper around a Linux distro running MAME. We could pretty much surmise that from the start, and it would make sense to take this route rather than reinventing the wheel several times over. But there's nothing really exciting about that, even if it does look nice.

You actually bring up something I've wondered about for a few years: who does have the rights to the 8-bit and ST computer lines these days? The 5200 could possibly be an interesting corner case in that regard, given the number of titles that were common to both it and the 8-bit line with virtually no changes between them. Thinking about it... Who owns the rights to the (mostly) pre-VCS dedicated consoles?

From what I can infer, the asterisks appear to indicate arcade releases. Duplicates may be explained by cases where there was both an arcade and home version of the same title.

Yeah, I see your point. I should have probably picked a better title for the thread. What I'm really after is anything that shows off the 1200XL's unique features - or bugs. Granted, it's not really all that far off from other XL-series machines, but from what I've read it does have its own quirks.

Those are certainly valid points. I will give the Aquarius credit for one thing: it did manage to ingrain itself into my memory. Granted, the impression wasn't even remotely favourable, but at least it did manage to make one. That said, it was the stepping stone to an Atari 800, which did manage to successfully keep me off of the parents' Apple. So it's got that going for it

Point taken (and agreed), but that's more down to crappy UI / UX than the actual glyph printed on the button.

You know, if you sued for damages and won, that would be a delightful lesson to all of the crowdfunders. Let's make it a class action. That way we can all play at home!

Ehhh.... I get what you're saying, but the 'Home' and 'Back' glyphs used for Android have become pretty much de facto standards at this point. Note that I'm not ruling out the possibility of the thing running Android (because Linux! Sorta.), but the presence of those buttons doesn't really tell much. Along those lines, I do still occasionally see icons originally designed for BeOS being used in places (online and in applications) to this day. While a BeOS-based AtariBox would rock, and RAWK HARD, that would kill the OMG LINUX!!inspanishthefirstoneisupsidedown!!! claims...