Arno1978

I'm lovin the Stella23 project. 😁

I'm a lurker here mostly and don't have much presence. I too am happy for Al for his decision and being an official employee of Atari. I've been reading every post and am on page 22 of the thread, but decided to jump ahead and post - I hope I'm not being to repetitive of what may have been stated. Apologies if I am. My feeling about what might be in everyone's best interest is if Atari released official documentation that stated exactly what their intentions are. It's been stated that the intention is to preserve a dedicated community, archival material and even show respect to the dedicated fanbase of gamers and developers. At the end of the day, Atari is a corporation. When corporations buy other entities - they acquire assets. It's been stated by a few members here that the games and history are more than just hardware and roms. It's experiences. Stories. Culture. Atariage is a community that keeps the past alive, with history, documentation, archiving, and hacks, fixes and very importantly - homebrew. It's very easy for a company to ride on the coattails of the past. It's also easy for companies to release old games as novelties for a quick buck. I personally can't stand mini knockoffs and what have you of old classic games (in the sense of hardware). To me these multi-game consoles, numerous cheap handhelds, mini arcade machines are novelties that get played 10 minutes before getting shoved into the closet and eventually ending up in a pile of unnecessary e-waste. When you sell out your IP like that, it diminishes and disrespects it. Atari needs to get away and KEEP away from that shit. At the moment, Atari SA is a small company, and seem to be respecting their IP more. I think the Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration is a step in the right direction. It gives those who are curious a taste of what was and its important history. I also like the carts made with serious collectors in mind. They look very well made and packaged. The fact that all collections are sold out, save for the newest game, is a good sign. The new VCS though is a hit and miss. It was never going to compete with the likes of Nintendo or Xbox, as the presence wasn't there and it's really a PC in an Atari shell. No apologies for the blunt description - that's what it is. It's a niche system that is only going to appeal to the hardcore Atari fans at the moment. My own personal opinion would be that Atari grows slowly and carefully. Not worry about profits at the moment, just keep the lights on and gain ground slowly. While Al is employed by Atari, still, let him have full free reign of AtariAge without any interference. (Of course, it is still understandable not to allow remakes of licensed IPs to be sold.) This community is a huge asset in a positive historical and cultural sense, but not a monetary asset and shouldn't be looked at that way. Acquisition of AtariAge also should not be for the purpose of posturing.. as in not - look bigger or look as if gaining success. Don't try to impress. If Atari truly respects this community for what it is, is willing to accept constructive criticism, feedback from this community, and be open to suggestions, then this could be a wonderful marriage. I definitely have one interesting idea of my own to share that could help breathe life back into classic arcade machines - and not just those by Atari. Since this is a Q&A and I've quite blathered on here, I wouldn't mind feed back from Atari reps. To Atari: what do you think of the suggestion of clear and legally official documentation? (If there is such a thing.. I'm not a lawyer.) Does anything I've stated strike a chord in a good way? Will you maintain quality over quantity?

The last time I had an Atari, my top 3 were: Adventure hands down. I played it for hours. Curse that @#$& bat, but it was awesome. The next 3 games are all 2nd favourite. They're not even competing for 2nd place, they are all simultaneously 2nd place. Yar's Revenge Missile Command I've only played Centipede via emulator, but I aim to play it physically.

I have friend in electronics who could test the board and even replace some of the aging components. So my thought was, if he can do that, then perhaps add to the boards what they did in later revisions. Like when they added a timer chip, or made it so one of the lines can't go above 5v. I wasn't sure if there were any physical glitches or gotchas in the older designs that could occasionally affect gameplay or affect the circuitry over time. But, if not that big of a deal and these boards certainly are robust, then maybe just a check up and tuning (if necessary) is all these units need. Thank you very much for your response. 🙂

Good day, I have what some may consider a stupid question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. My level of circuitry knowledge is basic, so I'm not sure how difficult if even possible the following would be. Can older boards be upgraded to resemble the circuitry of newer boards? And what I mean by that is adding or fixing components that later revisions accomplished. For example for Revision 16 (on the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_2600_hardware) states "Revisions 16 and up contain the model differences described above; they also include a timer chip (A205) added to the reset circuitry of the MPU chip. This chip eliminates the problem of power-on reset failures." Was the reset failure caused by a recent revision before 16 or was it always prevalent? I know the PCBs have different layouts from the early versions to later versions, but basically should be the same. I decided to join the club and get myself an Atari again. I had once owned a Vader, but stupidly sold it (curse my younger self). Tomorrow, I'm about to purchase a lot that contains 2 light sixers and a 4-switch CX2600-A. One is listed as "for parts", but not sure which console it is. I've also been seeing sales listings where VCS's had their PCBs tested and capacitors replaced. All I want to do is ensure that I can prolong the life of my units. I want to have one for sure that will last at least 35 years (when I'm 80) or longer. Also my deepest apologies, if this kind of question has been asked several times before and I happen to yet make another post about it. Thank you for your time and answers. -Arno

Hey ZillaRUSH, if you do get Pico-8 working, do you want to try out Bullet Ball: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=41585 It's a silly 2 or 4 player game. I'm curious if the VCS controllers would map to the Pico-8 inputs and proper player inputs. My game is best played with controllers. NES dpads work really well. I managed to get a FourScore working on my computer.

Thank you so much Spiceware. I had forgotten to mention, before you had replied earlier, I was watching your 2600 homebrew talk earlier this morning.. Haven't finished it yet (I'm at work), but will tonight. Thank you for linking the Source Code Repository. That's how I learn. Even if I get the concept, I like going through a number of examples to really get a thorough understanding - until it clicks and is almost 2nd nature. I call it patient learning, but it has made things slow to learn. I've been programming in Lua for 14 years and I'm still intermediate level, because I've been very slowly going through the language, and mostly coding with a portion of it. I also tend to re-invent the wheel the wrong way. I mean it's neat when you can make a little space exploration .. thing with 100 lines and a 5-d array, but was it the best approach? I don't think it was. I will bookmark your Collect Tutorial and will definitely go through it if I try my hand at 2600.

Thank you for the resources. I've actually been working on Easy 6502. I love it. At the moment, I'm trying out my own code to figure out how the carry flag works for the ADC and SBC operations. Binary math is pretty neat, but definitely has a few little catches. It seems in an SBC operation, you would only need the carry flag, if you subtract a number that's larger than half of what you're subtracting it from. Example. 15-8 would require it, but 15-7 wouldn't. Unless, I'm wrong. I'll figure it out. I am enjoying it though. The reason, I was thinking about 2600 programming, is that there are a lot of great resources and tutorials for it - covering every aspect of it. I tend to learn that way, by seeing examples of how a particular function of operations might work together, and then deconstructing them to see what is going on behind the scenes. I do now understand how the graphics at least work, and how they're manipulated in creating "sprites" or other interesting effects, etc. I have great respect for anyone who has programmed on the 2600. I love seeing creative things done with extreme limitations. I like doing things like that myself. Thank you for the replies. I'll stick to just learning the 6502 by itself. As I said in the first post, it's a NES game that I eventually want to make. The Atari still has a special place in my heart though, along with my other 80s consoles, so perhaps in a decade or so, I might try it out.

Alright. Thank you for your answer. Perhaps some day in the future I may try my hand at a 2600 rom. I have a concept that will work and doesn't seem to exist yet. I have no idea yet if it will be fun.

My apologies if this has been asked before. I've just recently (as in starting 2 weeks ago) learning 6502 assembly. My intent is to eventually create a NES game. But in the past few days, I've also been looking at the Atari 2600, finally understanding how it's limited graphics worked, and reading about or watching docs on many of the original Atari programmers. I watched Warren Robinett's GDC talk on Adventure a few years ago. For a system that was originally meant to run and display Combat and Pong and a few more variations of those 2 titles, the creativity the first programmers and homebrew programmers have shown is incredibly genius and astounding. I had 2 Atari's myself and had a few favorite titles that I would play hours on end. I've sometimes pondered learning to make an Atari game. But with such extreme limitations, and being a beginner at learning assembly, the architecture, "racing the beam", and trying to fit a game in to 4k rom that can only use 128 bytes of ram that has both game logic and display logic, is it the right system to start with? It seems almost masochistic to make a game for this system (no offense at all to programmers/devs). I'm sure the feeling is exhilarating when successfully making a game for the system, and is definitely a feat to be proud of.