SvOlli

And they use a different wiring for this? Why? The trick with connecting the buttons also to the paddles has to work on a 2600 as well.

I don't think there is any chance for a simple reason: speed. The audio signal was fed directly into the AVM chip to be processed instantly, while it can take several frames to get a reading from the potentiometers. The magic about the AVM is that it's pure analogue technique, and for this, if you want a reproduction close you should rather go for current FPGA hardware instead of the 2600. I also had to have one a couple of years ago to make this: The backstory for this is here: https://xayax.net/trsi/atari_video_music-the_demo/

@doubledown What is the 2600/7800 switch for? The two button joysticks / pads that came with the 7800 worked perfectly on both 2600 and 7800 systems, so replicating that wiring should eliminate the need for the switch, or is there something I'm missing?

Hello, I've promised Al_Nafuur that I'll take care of a Demoscene section for the PlusCart environment. Well, now we've got 125 files in there, which makes up for more than 100 demos worth watching. (Some of them are PAL/NTSC variations, a very few of them are more like proof-of-concept/compofiller quality.) The collection reflects the "defacto official" list of demos as provided by Pouet.net. The version of "Bang!" also has a custom PlusCart Easter egg (just different text). The Easter egg is described here. Have fun, SvOlli

Then please reflect that in the version number. Most probably this change will not justify a dasm 3.0, it will at least justify a version 2.21.0, instead of bumping up to 2.20.14.

At this point of discussion, I would suggest if you RIOT is socketed you swap it out for another chip. There's still new old stock available on ebay. The RIOT is the only chip that has died on me so far in my collection of 2600s. I've still got one with a broken RIOT, but it's a jr, so it's not socketed, and I lack the skill and tools of soldering that out.

There always was something that I wanted to know: would this demo work without a Harmony cart? Or any other cart that includes a microcontroller? So I asked @Albert to sell me one of those "old" boards that use a GAL for bankswitching and an original SARA RAM chip. I added my own memory chip (I used a flash chip 27SF256, since I expected to add some workarounds), but it worked the first time I tried. So I can now finally state that the hardware requirements are the same as "Fatal Run". Well, except for the ROM contents.

I'm also rolling some ideas about maintaining a ROM collection in a community effort for a quite some time now, and the best thing I came up was to create a git(hub) repo with some rules what to put where and how to name it, so additions could be done by a group of admins and for everyone else via merge requests. For better visibility it could be added to the "stella-emu" group, or a newly created group like "atari 2600 homebrew collection".

Let me throw in my 2 cents as well, as the definition of "real-time" was something that I took a deeper look into being at the university and also worked for QNX for about two years, who sell a "real-time" operating system. The term "real-time" is rather blunt. It just means that you can guarantee a response time. If this response time is one hour, it is still "real-time" as long as you can guarantee it under all circumstances (asides from power-loss, obviously). This includes software as well as the operating system. For the 2600, there is no OS, so only the software running to consider. And I would define "real-time" in this context as the response to the console switches and joystick, paddle, etc. If this happens within a couple of frames, the 2600 is "real-time". ...unless you take games into account a game like Chess, which takes a lot of time to calculate the next move. When during this period the switches are not evaluated, then it suddenly isn't "real-time" anymore. So the answer is neither "yes" or "no" more like "it depends, but typically yes". (In the operating system world "real-time" typically means that the notification of an input, like an interrupt, reaches your code in a "few milliseconds". And "few milliseconds" is a guaranteed precise number, that differs from system to system.)

Hmmm... It seems that I can't update the file in the post, so I've got to add the updated version here. I went with 2mm more space for the jumpers and 1mm on the SD card reader, just to be sure. UnoCart-2600_case.zip

Hmmm.. mine is a tight fit, but it works. Would adding another millimeter "on the inner side" be enough?

I started doing my first little project using KiCAD. But now I want to go for something slightly bigger. Since quite some time, I also want to do my very own flavoured 2600. So instead of going for a route like Ben Heckendorn with his super soldered 2600, I want to design a new PCB for the three original chips with options for changes like replacing the 6507 with a 6502. And maybe replace the cartridge slot with a soldered in UnoCart 2600. To accomplish this, I'd like to get some circuit diagrams. I know the original ones are around (I have them on my harddisk somewhere), but those contain some stuff that I don't want to replicate like the HF modulation stuff. Has already someone done some trimming done on the original diagrams or created some stripped down version? As with all my stuff, if I really get something done, it will be completely open, so anyone can modify it and order new 2600 PCBs.

I know this is rather far from firmware, but I chose this space for easy finding... As @Andrew Davie asked for my modification of a thingiverse design of a 2600 cartridge shell done for a UnoCart 2600, I decided to pick them up from my tinkercad account. So here they are, happy printing. UnoCart-2600_case.zip

Then look at your hard drive or mail/atariage inbox. I sent you the design, at the time I did it. If you can't find it, let me know and I'll send it again.

Taking a look at the compendium at http://www.ataricompendium.com/faq/vcs_tia/vcs_tia.html , it looks to me like the same chip from a different manufacturer. Or let me put it this way: if these chips / machines in question, I'd do it. But there's still a very very small chance, that this either would not work or at an even smaller chance break something. So, it's your call.

I would have to double-check by running in an emulator, but my guess is, that the games not producing any sound do not run on plain 262 lines per frame. And in this case the TV mute the sound as it assumes that the picture is faulty. Something like this usually happens when loading supercharger games, or when running a demo that does not produce any sync.

About the Atari Video Music system... There is more details view about this production at my project page: https://xayax.net/trsi/atari_video_music-the_demo/ Nevertheless, I also started about adding something like a microcontroller or a Raspberry Pi for automatically reproducing configurations. But the chance on breaking something beyond repair was too high for me. Also all of the controls have some analogue (dials) or mechanical (switches) components in them, this would have complicated things further. And the demo with a human "as a CPU" gave it a nice additional twist. And it was a pain in the rear to get it done without a major failure during recording.

Hello! As part of corona lockdown, I decided to build a dedicated retro PC for running emulators and stuff. For the Commodore emulator collection VICE, I decided, that I want a somewhat "real" keyboard. So I took one of my C64 keyboards and added an ESP32 as a bluetooth keyboard microcontroller. I'm quite pleased with the result. I'm still struggling with creating better keyboard mounts for 3D printing. But nevertheless, it's fun to grab the keyboard, press the RESTORE key for getting out of deep sleep, see the LED turn green and start using it with VICE. More infos can be found on the webpage: https://xayax.net/viceboard/ . The whole system is open source and the software is about 90% complete. There are still some very specific features missing, mostly about runtime configuration. The amount of effort I will take completing it will be also related to the feedback I get.

Stefany has quit working on the system. She will take it to a somewhat finished state and release everything except the FPGA source code. https://youtu.be/Gv9KELroAeo

Think of it like learning a language. British English is slightly different from American English, but they understand each other. So is CMOS 6502 compared to NMOS 6502. I suggest reading the Wikipedia articles for the different versions of the CPU to get an impression.

Cleaning up the project took me the whole evening: https://github.com/SvOlli/retrocartdumper

Now I can use some help. I've gone through my collection of games and found the following bank switching types: 2k, 4k, F8, F6SC, F4, and F4SC. I'm looking for some games / cartridges which utilize some of the more exotic bank switching types. I know I could use the Harmony Cart to mimic everything available, but to have a small collection of "testcarts" would be nice. So I'm looking for suggestions for carts with the requirements in the following order: - cheap (that includes shipping to Germany) - fun - PAL And also for using the Harmony Cart, a list a reference carts for a bank switching type with one available ROM per type. Also note, that only non Harmony specific types are wanted, so no DPC+ .

Well, I've got to write the dumper first, but that was one thing I had in mind building the dumper.

If you want to go this way, it might be easier just to go for Stella, as it is so close to being perfect. And most of the shortcomings can be overcome with some work: - if you want "instant on", you can port it to bare metal - if you want to plug in a cartridge, you can go for my dumper - there's enough hardware equipment to connect original controllers to PC / Raspberry Pi If you really want to tinker around with a Raspberry Pi running Stella only, I can offer you build-kit, that allows you to create an image with a Linux distribution starting directly into Stella. It's an additional layer for a well respected distribution build system "buildroot", so it's quite future-proof. Greetings back from Hannover, Germany, too SvOlli

The fix is rather simple: search for the term "-$30" and remove each occurrence. Thomas can explain is was in there in the first place.