PAH
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Atari 2600, Guitar, Fishing
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Is there a set date for when Lode Runner (and Boulderdash) will hit the AtariAge store?
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If you turned off your Atari while the Harmony was in the middle of loading a game, that can corrupt the BIOS on the Harmony cart. That happened to me recently. I don't recall if I just got a black screen or what, but I had to use the cable method to reprogram the BIOS. That revived mine.
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@batari I assume 3e+ needed bus stuffing because Stella's implementation had a custom peek function in the past. It no longer does. Does that mean that Harmony Encore could now support 3E+ without bus stuffing? If so, any chance 3E+ will be supported? Thanks.
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S-Video to HDMI converter that works with CyberTech S-Video mod
PAH replied to PAH's topic in Atari 2600
Thanks. unfortunately, the Gefen is quite expensive. I'm going to give the Monoprice converter a try; I've seen people mention having success with older consoles with that one. I'll return it if it doesn't work. -
I have a CyberTech S-Video mod in my 2600 and would (sometimes) like to hook it up to my computer monitor which only has HDMI inputs. I tried a Tendak converter, but it wouldn't recognize the chroma signal from the CyberTech; I just got black and white (and grays). (Yes, the Color/B&W switch was set for color.) I tried adjusting the contrast/brightness/saturation on the CyberTech but the Tendak still wouldn't output a color image. Has anybody used an S-Video to HDMI converter with a CyberTech S-Video modified 2600? If so, what brand/model converter worked for you? Thanks, Pete
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It turned out to be that the socketed chips in my light sixer needed to be reseated. Strange that everything else seemed to work fine and that when the problem showed up in Thrust it repeatedly had the planet color changing shortly before crashing. Anyway, pressed on the chips and they popped a bit into the sockets, and then all worked fine. Closed it back up, and it still works fine. Awesome game! Thanks!
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Well, the Thrust and the same controllers work fine in my 2600A with the same AC adapter, so it's a problem with my 2600+CyberTech system. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be the voltage regulator - that ranged from 5.08 to 5.12 V while playing the game until it crashed. Unless of course it is a very short dropout that my 100ms sampling meter didn't catch. Further troubleshooting awaits me.
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Thomas, Thanks for the quick reply (and the awesome game). I'll try digging up the necessary connectors/cables to hook up my unmodified 2600 jr. and verify that it doesn't have this issue.
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I recently started playing Thrust (platinum edition). Fantastic game!!! Unfortunately, I am having problems with it acting strangely and ultimately hanging. It plays fine for a while, and then the planet color starts changing every 1/2 second or so. All the other graphics stay the normal color, but the planet itself (playfield) starts changing. For example on a yellow planet, it will suddenly change to white, then grey, then a really light blue, and back to yellow (not sure about the exact sequence of colors, but something like that). Then after a a bit of that, the game completely locks up, or resets. I've seen the screen simply go black, and require a power cycle. It has also gone to black and white vertical bars and lock up, and once it reset back to the title screen and fixed itself. Normally, when it gets in this mode, I have to power cycle it to get it working right again, and then a few minutes later, same problem. This is on a light sixer with the CyberTech AV mod. Every other game I've played seems to play fine. I've compared my Thrust+ Platinum binary to the one on AtariAge and it compares perfectly. As far as controllers go, I'm using a Starplex controller (Asteroids like button layout) in the first controller port and a driving controller in the 2nd port. I use up/thrust, down/shield/tractor-beam and fire on the Starplex, and only rotate with the driving controller. The only odd thing I can think of is that the starplex controller does allow up and down to be pressed simultaneously; I'm not sure if the foot pedal controller that is explicitly supported prevents that or not. Anyone seen such a problem? Got a fix/workaround? Thanks, Pete
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From 500 write/1 sec to 1 write/5 sec is 2500 times as long as brand new. Of course, at 500 /sec, you had almost written 100,000 times in the first day! However, these were data writes into a file within a flash file system. Not all writes would cause an erase cycle. Many of them would just write to an already erased block. For example, if you erase a block (64K in this case), then write 512 bytes, then write another 512 bytes,... after 128 writes of 512 bytes, you finally fill up the block. That counts as 1 erase/write cycle. Then you erase and start writing to a different block. When you're done with that that block also has had 1 erase/write cycle. The flash file system has a wear leveling algorithm to make sure that all blocks get erased/written very close to the same number of times. I had a 16MB flash with 256 64K blocks. This would take 256*128 or 32768 writes of 512 bytes each to erase/write then entire flash once. When you take the wear leveling algorithm and flash file system overhead into consideration, it starts doing cleanup erase-writes more frequently as the drive fills up. In any case the first 100,000 writes to my file would have only erased/written the entire flash device a handfull of times, but as my log file got huge and filled the drive up, there would have been a lot of overhead erase/writes going on and the device would start getting hammered much more rapidly.
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I don't think large block erase flash devices have runtime defect management. Sector (512 byte) erase flash designed for things like SD cards may, but the devices I was using had 64K byte erase blocks. Even after it getting that slow, the flash still had the original capacity, and I'm sure they don't build in 100% extra for defect management.
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My experience with flash devices is that as they wear out from too many erase/write cycles, they get slower (i.e. they take longer to erase/write) rather than just stop working. Once I left a test running at work while I was on vacation. When I left it was logging about 500 messages a second to a file. When I got back from vacation a week later, it was still running, but had slowed to a crawl - about 1 message every 5 seconds. It took a while before I realized I had been logging to a flash drive, and had essentially worn the flash out. There were no errors in the flash drive; it just took about 5 times as long to erase and write a block as it did when the flash was brand new. From what I've read, after about 10,000 erase write cycles, they take about 10% longer to erase/write. After 100,000 erase/write cycles, they take about 500% longer (i.e. 5 times as long). So it takes a long time to start noticing it getting slower, but after you start noticing it, it will keep getting slower at a faster pace. Keep in mind, each erase block wears based on how many times it has been erased/written. Erasing and writing one block has no effect on the wear of the other blocks. That is why flash file systems use wear leveling to even wear the flash. I doubt the Krokodile cart can do wear leveling, so I image every time you load different stuff into it, the boot menu has to be updated in a constant block. If so, that block would wear out the fastest. But you should still get your 100,000+ programming cycles - it will just get slower.
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Checkout http://www.cheeptech.com/2600mods/2600mods.shtml for a comparison of all the A/V mods out there. I recently installed the Cybertech mod and it has fantastic video quality. I think it's worth the extra money. Pete
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Well, it is and it isn't. Checkout http://www.cheeptech.com/2600mods/2600mods.shtml for a comparison of the results of (probably) every a/v mod for the 2600 anyone has ever devised. I went to the trouble of building the 4050 mod, but even it had some really bad color bleed on some games - probably due to my using long unshielded wires from the 2600 main board to the mod board. I recently removed the 4050 mod and got a CyberTech board - it ROCKS!!! Super easy to install, and the video quality is phenominal. Although the price seems steep, the 4050 mod cost a bit over $20 in parts and a cable, plus a big chunk of time. Unless you're really strapped for cash and love soldering, I'd recommend plunking down the bucks for the CyberTech mod. Pete
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The video signal generated by the 2600 is not 100% corect to the NTSC/PAL specs, but it is close enough for most TVs. Also, nearly every 2600 program does double frame rate with 1/2 the vertical resolution (i.e. not interlaced). This is more likely to foul up the framing on digitial TVs as they typically de-interlace the video before displaying it. I wouldn't expect that to screw up the color, though. When you hooked up to the VCR, was the VCR on or off? Were you using the tuner in the TV or the VCR? Your best bet would be hooked up to the VCR, VCR on, VCR set to use it's tuner (i.e. use the VCR/TV to switch the VCR's tuner rather than pass-through mode). Hope this helps. Pete