krisjohn Posted July 25, 2002 Share Posted July 25, 2002 The CCU Jnr project's goal is to create an updated version of the CCU using 8cm CDs. Because it's not a good idea to have more than 99 tracks on an audio CD, very little of the original full-sized CDs are used. A direct copy of the original CD 1 has already been confirmed to fit on an 8cm disc. An initial batch of 8cm CD blanks have been sourced, enough for at least half a dozen copies. The source of these discs is reliable and further blanks should not be a problem. A Mini CD labling kit has been ordered, though it wasn't in stock at the time. A week or so should see it arrive. A major hurdle in the desired packaging was possibly overcome last night in a chance meeting with another 8cm CD freak, er, fan. A printing place close to my work will be asked if they can do limited full-colour print runs to a nice firm stock, probably tomorrow. All the ROMs I'd ever want are on my hard drive. Sorting them out and preparing a list will take some weeks. I intend to make a full copy of all six original CCU discs as a prototype, to test the layout and design of the labels and packaging. These will clearly be marked "Prototype" on each disk and the packaging. Beyond that a run equal to the number of people who confirm a strong interest by MSGing me here on AA (or a dozen, whichever is larger) will be made. This will be labeled "Beta". I am considering an at-cost update to purchasers of the beta version if any major faults with a CD are found. Any problems will then be sorted out (such as an old or PAL ROM sneaking into the set) and a full version 1.0 run will be made. Numbers are yet to be considered. A website will be created once the prototype exists, with full details, including costs of shipping (I'm in Australia -- good news for European Atari fans, not so good news for US fans). It is yet to be decided what will be done about PAL ROMs. Possibly if there's room a selection will be placed at the end of the sixth disc. None of the Supercharger games will be included in the collection. So, if anyone is seriously interested, please register said interest by MSGing me, here on AtariAge, an email address that's likely to still be around in 6 months or however long it takes me to bring all the peices together. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krisjohn Posted July 26, 2002 Author Share Posted July 26, 2002 Does anyone remember the price of the original CCU? Also, the PAL question may have been answered. A seventh disc may be available separately (discount for buying both packs) with PAL ROMs and updates to the original CCU. This may be of particular interest to current CCU owners. Thoughts? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Weis Posted July 26, 2002 Share Posted July 26, 2002 Does anyone remember the price of the original CCU? started at 45.00 and ended at 49.00 (both with priority mail and insurance) Take care, Rick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krisjohn Posted July 26, 2002 Author Share Posted July 26, 2002 Cool. The price will probably be somewhere between half and three quarters that price. I'll have to double-check what the 8cm blanks cost me, and check the international postage costs, but A$70 should give me plenty of room to move, including postage. A$50 probably for Australians. These are not final prices. BTW: I don't intend to use any of the original's artwork. In the spirit of the original 2600 jnr, it will be smaller, cheaper and with fewer frills. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krisjohn Posted August 6, 2002 Author Share Posted August 6, 2002 The project continues slowly. A placeholder website exists at: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~kris_j/atari.html Adhesive spindles for use in the packaging have almost been found. A foam style have been found that are just slightly too small and given to shrinking. A slightly larger rubber one is being searched for. (This won't mean much until I get some photos up.) The most convenient printing place can't print on heavy enough cardboard. 250gsm (I think that's right) is still just thick paper, not thin cardboard. It's been made obvious that if the card is too thin, the CDs will pop off their spindles when it bends. A bit of a setback. The labelling kit arrived yesterday but had been seriously under-packed. It was more or less destroyed so I have to wait for a replacement. Organisation of ROMs has not progressed, though I'm catching up on general organisation of files on my PC. Three more prototype 8cm CDs have been burnt (I don't have great access to a full-sized CD drive capable of reading audio CDs). The remaining two CCU discs will be copied once I've got the labelling kit sorted out. I've only had two interested parties. The initial run will be reduced to 6 if I don't get a few more bites. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krisjohn Posted July 11, 2003 Author Share Posted July 11, 2003 This undead project lives on. I finally printed the prototype labels this morning. I still have the names of those couple of people who were interested. The CCU Jnr project, if it ever gets finished, will simply be to recreate the original CCU disks in an 8cm format. No changes, no updates, just the original set. Chance are that I'll only make three or four prototypes. More interestingly, I've just ordered a very cool CD burner that can pack more data on a CD than it should. I'll be doing some serious testing with this drive and if it can pack an extra 20% onto an audio CD, I might break the 99 track barrier (by using indexes, don't know how most drives' skip funtions with indexes) and see just how many games can be put on a single CD. Compatibilty will be an issue, but I've got somewhere in the order of 10 significantly different classic CD devices that it can be tested on to get some idea of how well it might work across the board. This might be a seventh CD with titles released since the original CCU or it might be used to reduce the CCU to four 8cm discs or possibly one full-sized disc. (A normal 8cm data disc holds 185MBytes of data. A typical 12cm disc holds 700MBytes of data. Since converting down to 8cm discs required no changes, we can assume that a single volume is equivalent to no more than 185MBytes. The new drive I'm getting can fit 1Gig on a 700MByte, or 1.2Gig on a seriously over-burnt 99min CD.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krisjohn Posted July 13, 2003 Author Share Posted July 13, 2003 And here's a picture... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MegaManFan Posted July 13, 2003 Share Posted July 13, 2003 Nice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SmileyDude Posted July 13, 2003 Share Posted July 13, 2003 A suggestion -- I don't know if the MP3 format would butcher up the audio in a way that would be incompatible, but I do know that there are a bunch of CD players coming out on the market that can play MP3s... assuming that you get a 10-1 ratio, that means you would be able to fit all 6 CDs onto one CD with plenty of room to spare. Now I really wish that I had a Cuttle Cart... darn it... how much do those go for on ebay? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krisjohn Posted July 14, 2003 Author Share Posted July 14, 2003 A suggestion -- I don't know if the MP3 format would butcher up the audio Nope, works fine. I used my Rio MP3 player with my CC for a while (until the battery contacts started to suck. ) You have a good point though. I was sort of aiming for audio CDs because that's the way that the original was done, but there are so many MP3 playing stand alone CD players that perhaps the single CD version is best as a collection of MP3s. I own one of these. Which is one of the reasons I was interested in doing an 8cm version of the CCU. I wonder how many MP3s it can cope with on a single CD. "Cuttle Cart Underground MP3 edition" -- sounds good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SmileyDude Posted July 14, 2003 Share Posted July 14, 2003 Nope, works fine. I used my Rio MP3 player with my CC for a while (until the battery contacts started to suck. ) What's the lowest bitrate you can use before you get to the point where the game won't load? BTW, if you did an MP3 version, I'd be willing to buy a copy -- even without having a Cuttle Cart -- it just seems too cool to pass up Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NE146 Posted July 14, 2003 Share Posted July 14, 2003 I never thought an audio CD would work well because of the sheer number of roms.. i.e. even with just 99 tracks on a single cd, what if you wanted to play track #45? That's a lot of button presses on most cd players However, an MP3 cd sounds like it could work, since most MP3 cd players have a function where you could jump by DIRECTORIES... so you could theoretically group the rom mp3's into groups of 10 (or whatever) into seperate directories and be that much more easier to navigate as opposed to a straight audio cd where the tracks are always 'in the root' so to speak Looks good though. Personally I'll stick to using a laptop and PLAYBIN.EXE. But I gotta admire the time it takes to translate all those roms into seperate audio files. Now that is a feat! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krisjohn Posted July 15, 2003 Author Share Posted July 15, 2003 What's the lowest bitrate you can use before you get to the point where the game won't load? I find that 44.1KHz, 128k/s mono has the best results. an MP3 cd sounds like it could work, since most MP3 cd players have a function where you could jump by DIRECTORIES... so you could theoretically group the rom mp3's into groups of 10 (or whatever) into seperate directories and be that much more easier to navigate as opposed to a straight audio cd where the tracks are always 'in the root' so to speak I confirmed this last night. I had five zip files of 2600 ROMs which I converted to wavs then to MP3s, just leaving them in their five directories. I did a quick burn of an 8cm CD (~560 encoded ROMs are a whole 80MBytes) and whacked it in my little RipGo!. Skipping to the game you want is dramatically easier. I'm inclined to setup 27 folders (1, A, B ... Z) and put the appropriate games in each folder by name. I'll work on file naming and tagging in my "spare time" An MP3 edition is easier to maintain once I've caught up with all the available ROMs too. Meanwhile, I'm still trying to workout what to do about a nice case for the disc(s). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lost Monkey Posted July 15, 2003 Share Posted July 15, 2003 But I gotta admire the time it takes to translate all those roms into seperate audio files. Now that is a feat! I did that myself several years ago by making a batch file... I ended up making a set of 4 CDs for myself, then after getting a few compliments on them, I made a few (literally) more sets and sold them.. I am certain a couple people on AA have them. I know I sold one to slapdash, but I figured at the time he was just checking to see if I copied Stella Gets a New Brain. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SmileyDude Posted July 15, 2003 Share Posted July 15, 2003 I'll work on file naming and tagging in my "spare time" Boy, tagging could get interesting -- there is a year field, that's obviously the year it was released. You have genre -- I guess you could fill that in with the game type. There is artist -- I guess that could be the company that released it. You have a lyrics field -- you could probably stuff the instructions in there. You have a album cover field -- that becomes the scan of the cart or the box (you pick ) Sure, a lot of this wouldn't be seen by most people, but it's the little details that add a lot. Need some help? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SmileyDude Posted July 15, 2003 Share Posted July 15, 2003 I'll work on file naming and tagging in my "spare time" Boy, tagging could get interesting -- there is a year field, that's obviously the year it was released. You have genre -- I guess you could fill that in with the game type. There is artist -- I guess that could be the company that released it. You have a lyrics field -- you could probably stuff the instructions in there. You have a album cover field -- that becomes the scan of the cart or the box (you pick ) Sure, a lot of this wouldn't be seen by most people, but it's the little details that add a lot. Need some help? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krisjohn Posted July 15, 2003 Author Share Posted July 15, 2003 Need some help? Quite possibly. If anyone feels like making MP3s from any of the ROMs on AA, particularly any ROMs new in the last 12 months or so, with full tag details, PM me and I'll give you an address you can email to. Feel free to use this thread to announce titles you intend to work on so no one duplicates your work needlessly... No promises that a product will come out at the other end, but if it does anyone that emails me usable files will be in the credits. The only rules I can think of is that the files must be 44.1kHz, 128k/s mono and the file name should be start with the game name then any other information that identifies the varient should be in successive square brackets. Eg: Escape from Blah [sears][PAL].mp3. Oh, and no Starpath games that were on Stella Gets a New Brain. Cool. Feels like a real project again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krisjohn Posted July 15, 2003 Author Share Posted July 15, 2003 For anyone wondering what I'm referring to when I talk of the case that the GBA player boot disc comes in, here is a pic. (I started a thread asking for help here: http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=30218) Ideally I'd like a version of this case that accepts two or three discs, or a full-sized DVD style case that can cope with all six discs of the audio version of the CCU Jnr. So if anyone has any clues, I'd be most interested. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deadtech Posted July 15, 2003 Share Posted July 15, 2003 I am sorry if this is a stupid question, and I don't have either hardware item in question, but i these were kept as music CDs, not MP3s, would they be usable on a Starpath Superchager? It seems to be quite a bit more common, and I had planned on getting one eventually. If these can work on a Supercharger, definately count me in! -deadtech Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krisjohn Posted July 15, 2003 Author Share Posted July 15, 2003 I am sorry if this is a stupid question, and I don't have either hardware item in question, but i these were kept as music CDs, not MP3s, would they be usable on a Starpath Superchager? It seems to be quite a bit more common, and I had planned on getting one eventually. If these can work on a Supercharger, definately count me in! I think that 4k ROMs can be loaded onto a modified supercharger, but I'm not sure. Try here http://home.earthlink.net/~resqsoft/wtw.htm for an answer. Also, MP3s or CD audio, they're still audio files to be played at a CC or SS, the question is whether or not you have a standalone MP3 CD player... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deadtech Posted July 16, 2003 Share Posted July 16, 2003 You know what, in that case, count me in. I will figure something out about how to use them in the futre. I will take one set. -deadtech Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eckhard Stolberg Posted July 16, 2003 Share Posted July 16, 2003 I think that 4k ROMs can be loaded onto a modified supercharger, but I'm not sure. Also, MP3s or CD audio, they're still audio files to be played at a CC or SS, the question is whether or not you have a standalone MP3 CD player... Yes, 4K ROMs can be loaded into a Supercharger, but the audio format is slighly different between the SC and the CC to allow selecting all the additional bankswitching formats that the CC supports. Therefore you can use SC audio on a CC (with all the problems that 4K games might have on an unmodified SC), but you can not use CC audio on a SC. You would have to create two different sets of CDs, one with SC encoding and one with CC encoding. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krisjohn Posted July 17, 2003 Author Share Posted July 17, 2003 You would have to create two different sets of CDs, one with SC encoding and one with CC encoding. Or, for the MP3 version, simply have a Supercharger folder with all the 4k ROMs encoded for it -- there's plenty of room. Anyone got exact details on what can and can't be made to run on a SC just so I make the most of that directory? While we're talking inclusions, none of the SC games on Stella Gets a New Brain will be included (I forget what the reason is, but I'm fairly sure it's a good one) and Skeleton and Skeleton+ won't be included by request of the author. Does anyone else know of any games that should not be included? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted July 17, 2003 Share Posted July 17, 2003 Does anyone else know of any games that should not be included? Have you asked the other homebrew authors for their permission? I am sure you will get it by most of them but you shouldn't risk adding any modern homebrews without the authors permission. BTW: You hereby get mine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krisjohn Posted July 18, 2003 Author Share Posted July 18, 2003 Have you asked the other homebrew authors for their permission? I am sure you will get it by most of them but you shouldn't risk adding any modern homebrews without the authors permission. BTW: You hereby get mine. Respectively: No, good idea and thanks! Just an update: Alpha versions of MP3 edition will be available after I've determined permission for each of the homebrew titles and sorted out SC compatibility. Alpha versions will be cheap and will be used as much for testing payment and shipping as they will for testing the games. Beta versions will be available once I've sorted out an attractive case. I still can't find anyone that can supply me with a DVD-style case for 8cm media. Hopefully version 1.0 will be available some time before the heat death of the universe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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